“At last we re-enter our fatherland,” cried Marco Fiore, with a sigh of relief; and, without waiting for a reply from Vittoria, he placed his grey travelling cap on his head and left the compartment.
“Ought I to come too?” Vittoria asked, as she rejoined him in the corridor.
“If you want a stroll, yes. If not, it isn’t necessary. The station is very grey and gloomy.”
“Very gloomy,” repeated the woman in a low voice.
“But our country is so beautiful. Aren’t you content to return home?”
“I am glad,” she replied, without further observation. He looked at her as he did now and then with a scrutinising eye, but the pure face assumed that cold and closed aspect against which every glance failed.
“I am going for a small stroll,” he said, shrugging his shoulders lightly, “the luggage will be examined later on in the train.”
He disappeared along the corridor, and a little later Vittoria saw him walking up and down in the gloomy station, which not even the late May sun managed to lighten. Then she rose and placed herself before the window on the other side of the compartment, watching another train stop on its way to France. Her eyes were fixed on the train. She tried to discover the faces of those who were travelling within, to question if possible their physiognomies, and read there what was passing.
She heaved a deep sigh, and felt jealous of those who were leaving Italy perhaps for ever, and were travelling to France or England, or further, perhaps, never to return. She would have liked to have been one of those unknown travellers, to turn her back for ever on her country, to take away with her the man she adored, far, far away to unknown countries, losing at last the recollection of her own country, of her own people.
“Oh, this returning, this returning!” she thought to herself so desperately that she almost said it aloud.